


~ATH(PM) {} EXECUTE(DDLC);

by CreativityTheEmotion



Series: Doki Doki Infinite Choices AU [3]
Category: Doki Doki Literature Club! (Visual Novel)
Genre: Gen, ~ATH
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-05
Updated: 2020-03-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:46:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23025763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CreativityTheEmotion/pseuds/CreativityTheEmotion
Summary: Dan Salvato needs to confide in a friend throughout the development of his first solo video game project.
Series: Doki Doki Infinite Choices AU [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1654861
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	~ATH(PM) {} EXECUTE(DDLC);

SALVATO: And then, as she puts her nose in the juice bottle, she notices something is amiss

SALVATO: Someone has up and replaced all of her apple juice with piss.

SALVATO: Without a word, she seals the bottle up, then opens the window and launches it as far as possible, before turning to the rest of the club and asking: "Who did it? WHO DID IT?"

SALVATO: And then, nothing but laughs: the more pissed off she is, the cuter she is

SALVATO: I swear to god, those are honest words by the other club members

SALVATO: And then she goes: "It's the fifteenth day in a row that you're doing this!"

SALVATO: Snickers all abound

MASHA: i think thats pretty funny though

MASHA: cute? debatable and depends on how natsuki looks

SALVATO: I'd say she's "punchable face" material

MASHA: funny? definitely

SALVATO: Anyway, the mere fact that I'm even continuing watching Little Monster just shows how much off the deep end I am, re: anime

SALVATO: But I can't help it

MASHA: maybe you need an intervention

SALVATO: I'm okay.

SALVATO: I think

SALVATO: That reminds me of a little something that's been in the back of my mind for a year now, though

. . .

SALVATO: So, it would start off as your standard cutesy terribly written visual novel

SALVATO: But then, it would gradually begin falling apart as the script breaks, introducing horror elements

SALVATO: And I think - there are many an ARG that require you to manipulate files in order to access the next part, but I don't think anyone's done it yet with a bona fide game

SALVATO: So, that would be pretty nifty to include

. . .

SALVATO: Like, you have your assortment of girls with routes

SALVATO: And then, there's the exposition fairy of sorts, who intimately knows the other ones and helps you get together with one of them

SALVATO: Nominally

SALVATO: In actuality, she's going crazy, and she knows it's all a game, and that nothing is real

SALVATO: So, she causes mayhem just so she can be with you

SALVATO: And in this case, "you" means YOU and not the bland blank slate male fantasy self-insert protag that you have been playing as, all this time

SALVATO: Who, let's face it, isn't a character in any type of those games.

MASHA: what if you make him a character?

SALVATO: How?

. . .

SALVATO: About the others? That is a very good question, indeed

SALVATO: I think I could parody the anime scene extensively, since it's just so ridiculous

SALVATO: That people will fall for a fictional girl just because she happens to be labeled as "tsundere" or "yandere" or any other number of "dere"s

SALVATO: But the trick is to make them compelling to those sorts of people AND also make them fleshed out characters so that they're compelling to fans of real literature

. . .

SALVATO: I'm back with character concepts

MASHA: hopefully theyre just as terrible as the little monster girl

SALVATO: It is my dream of dreams to strive for that kind of perfection.

SALVATO: Anyway!

MASHA: lets hear it

SALVATO: Yeah, so there's the first-year girl who's blunt and tsundere, kind of full of herself but not very smart

SALVATO: She tries to put herself above other people but they don't really take her seriously because she's all talk

SALVATO: Then there's the third-year girl who is the mature one who studies hard and gets intimidated when people tease her, and she timidly tries to keep people on track. She expresses her feelings that she's too shy to voice through very metaphorical writing.

SALVATO: Then the third girl is your childhood friend, she's pretty naive and innocent but is always nice to everybody and just wants to help. She likes to relax and enjoy the simple things in life (like leisurely spending her club time with the boy she has feelings for wink wink)

. . .

SALVATO: Well I could make the childhood friend the crazy one, but I was thinking about having the typical smart/athletic/pretty popular girl be the crazy one

. . .

SALVATO: I also want to kill the childhood friend.

. . .

SALVATO: Killing the "I just want everyone to be happy" girl is the most disturbing

SALVATO: Especially if she commits suicide

. . .

SALVATO: All of the girls, in fact, are messed up in the mind and it's a huge misnomer to call one and exactly one of them "crazy"

SALVATO: Indeed, there is exactly one character who realizes "the truth", but you know

SALVATO: We have social anxiety/confidence issues, we have depression issues

SALVATO: Would be a shame to let that go to waste, now, wouldn't it?

. . .

SALVATO: I changed my mind.

SALVATO: I don't NECESSARILY want to kill off the childhood friend.

SALVATO: Just think about it: inevitably, there will be players who like each of the girls

SALVATO: And if they don't care for the childhood friend romance trope, then the childhood friend suddenly confessing her love, before committing suicide, might come as a bit heavy-handed, like the game is forcing its script upon you

SALVATO: When the WHOLE POINT is that the script is breaking down, and the suicide is an unscripted event

SALVATO: Diegetically; it will of course, in reality, be scripted and fully graphic

SALVATO: Content warning!

MASHA: as long as the creepy visuals have their time and place im not totally against

SALVATO: Good.

. . .

SALVATO: Yeah, so that's the idea: now, just to figure out how to execute it

. . .

MASHA: ngl when you said execute

MASHA: i pictured you lining up all the girls by the guillotine

SALVATO: No pun intended.

SALVATO: Although, as death is a common theme, I might actually have to intend to include a pun or two

SALVATO: "Hang out" and "leave her hanging" for the one who commits suicide by hanging

SALVATO: "A dose of her" if there's overdosing involved

SALVATO: etc.

. . .

SALVATO: Yeah, but how?

SALVATO: How do you pick apart the player's mind and see which girl they truly care for, regardless of the route they have decided to pursue?

SALVATO: If I can't work out that question, I might just need to return to fixing the first death to the childhood friend.

MASHA: the FIRST death

SALVATO: All of the girls die at the hands of the crazy self-aware, remember?

. . .

SALVATO: I think I might have a solution.

MASHA: all ears

SALVATO: It's something I found when almost angrily perusing the problem I wanted to solve

SALVATO: It's a compiler for a language called "~ATH" - wow, never heard of that one, and manuals are even harder to come by than a compiler

SALVATO: But I have a hunch - a stronger hunch than I've ever had in my life - that this is the tool I need to make my game

SALVATO: Keep in mind, I don't even know if the game will officially become a thing

SALVATO: But I have a feeling that if it does, it will be all thanks to ~ATH.

SALVATO: The only real issue, in the end, will be getting ~ATH and Ren'Py to mate

MASHA: has this been done before?

SALVATO: Probably not, but I might as well be a pioneer

. . .

SALVATO: So, I've finally nabbed some code samples to officially start my ~ATH journey, and been working through

SALVATO: Up until I compiled a badly written source code piece and my computer exploded.

SALVATO: I swear to god, I'm not making this up one bit

SALVATO: It's like someone, in a split second, replaced my motherboard with primed explosives

SALVATO: Luckily, nothing else of value is lost - I do well to back up my stuff, even for dangers much lesser than this - and the development of my little game can continue

. . .

SALVATO: Alright, so development of the game has kinda been on two tracks, as of now

SALVATO: I am still trying to master the goodness of ~ATH, though achieving anything tangible seems so far away

SALVATO: And I'm growing tired of buying cheap used computers just to have them blow up since I messed up the code

SALVATO: But at the same time, I just want to get a feel for the game, how it's supposed to look like, feel like, sound like

SALVATO: All the important stuff.

SALVATO: Want an alpha version?

MASHA: yes please

. . .

MASHA: alright ive played what you have so far

MASHA: each of the girls really feels like a real person

MASHA: and i dont just mean maria

MASHA: but especially bookworm

MASHA: what inspired the name maria if you dont mind me asking?

SALVATO: I just reused a name from a creepypasta I did a while ago.

SALVATO: The names are obviously temporary; I don't think there's anyone in real life, in Japan or America, named "Tsundere" or "Bookworm"

SALVATO: As are the sprites; good grief, the sprites look exactly as terrible as something pulled out of an anime character creator can look like

SALVATO: The game is shaping up to be ironically good

SALVATO: Well, too bad: I want to make it actually good

. . .

SALVATO: Alright, starting to nail the names down, slowly but surely

SALVATO: So, Maria is now Monika

SALVATO: Like Monica, but with a K since I don't think there's a C when you transliterate from Japanese to English

SALVATO: Which is an aspect in and of itself

SALVATO: I'm really aiming for that "badly translated Japanese VN" style of writing

SALVATO: "Uuuuuuu", "uwa", "kya", etc.

SALVATO: And awkward sentence structures

MASHA: are you SURE your projects not ironic?

SALVATO: I don't even know, and with articles such as Little Monster apparently being 100% genuine, I don't even wanna know

. . .

MASHA: speaking of little monster the tsundere girl reminds me a lot of what you told me of that ones protag

SALVATO: Not intentional, but the least I can do is throw in a name reference; it's not like anyone's going to notice

SALVATO: Then it's official

SALVATO: The first-year tsundere is now named Natsuki

. . .

MASHA: and maria or monica or whatever is just flowey from undertale

SALVATO: I haven't played Undertale, and now that you've mentioned it, don't wanna play it

SALVATO: Not until DDLC is done

MASHA: ddlc?

SALVATO: Accidental inspiration, and then being accused of copying something, is singlehandedly the single worst thing that can happen to an artist and will irreversibly damage their integrity and psyche

SALVATO: It's one thing when it's an obscure anime, and another when it's an indie game that my game will inevitably get compared to.

MASHA: answer me

SALVATO: Sorry

SALVATO: Yeah, the project has a name now, and has had one for a fair amount of time

SALVATO: Doki Doki Literature Club!

SALVATO: Literature club being obvious, and doki-doki being the sound of a heartbeat, which is part romantic, part horror

. . .

SALVATO: Music!

SALVATO: Music music music

SALVATO: Can't believe I completely forgot that aspect.

SALVATO: So, I think that the best course of action would be for me to take the complete production of soundtrack into my own hands

SALVATO: I can do one or two BGM pieces, and that way, I have the most control over the atmosphere of the game

SALVATO: Musical, as well as visual

MASHA: forgetting that youre not an artist?

SALVATO: I'll micromanage the commission artwork if I have to, and I'll go through as many artists as I need to

SALVATO: It's utterly impractical for me to learn visual arts in the timespan I want to allot to DDLC, so I'll have to compromise, but as far as presentation goes, I want as few compromises as possible

SALVATO: But as for music, I can already do half-decent music, so why not?

. . .

SALVATO: One thing that might be challenging, though, is

SALVATO: I want Monika, at the very end of the game, to come out with a Still Alive/Want You Gone piece.

SALVATO: But I don't know about literally everything.

MASHA: explain?

SALVATO: Well, I've already decided that the game won't really have any voice acting

SALVATO: EVEN IF the game is all scripted, it's just not the type of script that the game dev (me) expects to be presented in spoken form, and I just don't have the budget for voice actors

MASHA: yet you do have a budget for spare computers

SALVATO: Shut up.

SALVATO: But at the same time, those two songs are basically icons of gaming at this point, and it always helps to pay a little homage

SALVATO: But what if Monika ends up sounding not the way players imagined her sounding?

SALVATO: It's up in the air

. . .

MASHA: i can really see how lindas story is tragic though

MASHA: like you put it the best yourself

MASHA: the death of the i want everything to be happy girl

MASHA: ironic

MASHA: she could make others happy but not herself

SALVATO: Yes

SALVATO: Also, thanks for reminding me to replace ANOTHER name from the creepypasta

SALVATO: Same creepypasta

. . .

SALVATO: To be fair, if this was an American setting, I would just name her something like Saoirse

MASHA: saori

SALVATO: Sayuri

MASHA: sayori

SALVATO: Is that even a Japanese name?

MASHA: who cares

SALVATO: Exactly! Who cares

SALVATO: As long as it fits phonetically, translators shouldn't have too much trouble, and I'm pretty sure "yo" is a valid syllable

SALVATO: Sayori it is, then

. . .

SALVATO: And the last news from naming department: Bookworm is now Yuri

. . .

SALVATO: So, that makes Yuri, Monika, Sayori and Natsuki

SALVATO: I'm feeling happy about this roster

. . .

SALVATO: I have a funny thought regarding Yuri, though.

MASHA: shoot

SALVATO: She finds her comfort in the world of books, not people, right?

MASHA: yes

SALVATO: What if...

SALVATO: She has a husbando

. . .

SALVATO: Someone, somewhere is going to declare each of the girls their waifu

SALVATO: And having a "no u" up your sleeve would help so, so much.

SALVATO: Just imagine the discourse

. . .

MASHA: this is all good and well with ddlc but hows tildeath going

SALVATO: Yeah... my ~ATH endeavor

SALVATO: Well, I haven't had a computer blow up in a month, and I think I've figured out how to sandbox the whole thing, so that it affects the fictional universe created for the express purpose of a program, rather than the real universe

MASHA: fictional universe

MASHA: youre not making ddlc into a simulation?

SALVATO: I have no plans to, but who knows?

. . .

SALVATO: Again, remember the key detail I want in the game

SALVATO: Some sort of easily manipulable part, that one is required to manipulate in order to progress and see the credits

SALVATO: And since both ~ATH and Ren'Py presume that their code will be compiled and inaccessible, it's kind of a vulnerability I have to directly expose, independent of both of those

. . .

MASHA: what if

MASHA: each of the girls is an independent file

MASHA: and when a girl dies her file is deleted

MASHA: and in the end you have to delete monika

SALVATO: If Monika ends up being deleted from the game, how can she deliver the credits song?

MASHA: if glados is destroyed in portal 1 how can she sing about being still alive

MASHA: she even says in portal 2 she was busy being dead

. . .

SALVATO: Since I can't come up a better idea, character files it is

SALVATO: I MIGHT have hidden an ARG in those files already, before I even did anything worthwhile with those files that actually affects the gameplay.

MASHA: props to your maria and linda creepypasta for being proper fucked up

. . .

SALVATO: Alright, first attempt at trying to make ~ATH and DDLC coerce.

SALVATO: Each of the girls has a subroutine running for her, that checks if her character file exists, and if it doesn't, then the girl disappears from the game

SALVATO: It's all still scripted, though, so when a girl disappears, the others just continue their life as though she existed, and talk to a ghost

MASHA: spooky

SALVATO: Might write a poem about it

. . .

SALVATO: Speaking of poems, what do you think of the poem minigame?

MASHA: tbh i just end up not caring and writing a roses are red violets are blue

SALVATO: Yeah...

SALVATO: There are certain words, that you can write in your poem and it will help with your romantic endeavors with one of the girls, but these are inaccessible unless you dig in the files, and in hindsight, it's just so cumbersome.

SALVATO: I mean, you can check out poemwords.txt, but I think I have a better idea regarding it all

. . .

SALVATO: Hey, this might be an irrelevant aside, but either way, people will want to draw... that kind of fanart of my girls.

SALVATO: And I really don't wanna limit them; after all, creative expression is creative expression

SALVATO: So, disregard everything I said about years; all the girls and the hormone-overriden libido-driven barely-mature solitary male character of the game are canonically 18 now

. . .

SALVATO: Alright, so I've been thinking about it.

SALVATO: About how the "script" will be handled and how it will all interact with ~ATH

SALVATO: And I've come to the conclusion that if I am to fully simulate the girls, with their dialogue and expressions, then I need final art assets

SALVATO: And I do mean final. No more crappy anime character creator sprites, and temporary assets from an artist I don't end up sticking with are also unacceptable

. . .

MASHA: hows ddlc

SALVATO: Still stuck in the art phase

SALVATO: I've already went through two artists, and while both of them have delivered great concept art, I'm just not clicking with them

SALVATO: But hey, any opportunity to work on music, both in the BGM and credits song departments, is a good one

SALVATO: ~Every day, I look out through the window of my reality~

SALVATO: ~In my hand is a pen that will help me end this insanity~

MASHA: hmm

. . .

SALVATO: So, I've been in talks with Satchely, and I think I've got it

SALVATO: With her, art has been progressing faster than ever, at least as far as characters go

SALVATO: She doesn't really do backgrounds, though

. . .

SALVATO: Alright, this is the final alpha of DDLC in its current form, wherein all the art assets are done and I have some form of the credits song (yes, with vocals), but the script is still all hardcoded

SALVATO: The last version in which there's no ~ATH involvement

SALVATO: Are you feeling queasy? Because I sure am

MASHA: best of luck and may your computer not explode

. . .

SALVATO: So... no computer explosions have happened on my end yet - looks like the whole sandboxed universe idea is really paying off

SALVATO: But there are two main problems

SALVATO: Right now, I'm mostly trying to handle dialogue generation through Python and some grammar structures I've defined, but that just makes the girls sound like Cleverbot (even though they essentially are - Cleverbot with an anime profile pic)

. . .

SALVATO: But that's not the worst of it

SALVATO: As I said, the whole purpose of Monika's character is that she knows that she's a game character, and the way she interacts with the world should reflect that

SALVATO: But whenever I try to do literally anything about it, she just ends up going berserk and wiping all the game files

SALVATO: Maybe it's a hint that that's how the game should end, I don't know.

MASHA: well maybe the literature club is a place where no happiness can be found

SALVATO: I was thinking more along the lines of the epiphany simply being too much for her to bear, but your idea works, too

. . .

SALVATO: So, I've contemplated for the longest time, and though I've been actively working on the project for the longest time, it's been sucking the soul out of me.

SALVATO: As you've said, there's no happiness in the Literature Club.

SALVATO: And... I've decided to abandon the game and wipe all of my progress on it, including backups

MASHA: aww man

MASHA: you were doing so great

SALVATO: April Fools!

MASHA: oh shiiiiiiiiiiit

SALVATO: In all seriousness, though, I actually had April Fools in mind as a deadline when I would release the game, you know, as it, in general, is not what it seems

SALVATO: But that hasn't worked out.

SALVATO: Don't worry; I'll be doing this as a proper game dev and have a proper release date in mind, a good ways before I actually release the game.

SALVATO: And don't worry, I'm too far into this project to cancel it.

SALVATO: After all, PM died for this.

SALVATO: Also, since the game is so misleading, I think it's for the best if I release it for free and then tack on some merch or some concept art or whatever, for sale.

SALVATO: Perhaps even some of this convo can make it in?

. . .

SALVATO: So, I thought I would two-track development once again

SALVATO: I keep doing that, don't I? Ren'Py and ~ATH, art and music...

SALVATO: Well, this time, it's Monika and everyone else

SALVATO: Having her wipe the game over the most minor argument is quite frustrating, and hampers my progress when I actually want to finetune how the other girls act and react.

SALVATO: And don't even get me started on the lazy-ass NEET-to-be everything-wrong-with-anime-fans degenerate protag.

. . .

SALVATO: I have some good news and some bad news.

SALVATO: Good news is Monika no longer wants to wipe the game

SALVATO: But at what cost? Essentially, she is coded in such a way that she knows it's all futile, and playing along is futile, too

SALVATO: And the rough character outline that I had... is working, but is also kind of a massive facade.

SALVATO: I think that Monika might be the most compelling character in the game of them all, and that's saying quite a lot about the antagonist, who you must have the guts to delete in order to progress.

MASHA: as long as no one makes her into a waifu simulator youre good

. . .

SALVATO: Well, that went well

SALVATO: Finally merged the Monika branch of DDLC with the rest, and the first thing she did was wipe all the girls just as Sayori and her dense-as-a-black-hole inconsiderate asshole of a "childhood friend" were walking to school.

SALVATO: I need the game, man! It's supposed to build up gradually.

SALVATO: This is even worse than the cheap, shock value horror.

. . .

SALVATO: So, character coding has already become pretty bloated, just in order for me to get them to act like convincing anime.

SALVATO: And yes, I had to concede and make the better part of dialogue generation in ~ATH.

SALVATO: But trying to integrate the separate branches has made the game even more bloated than it already is.

SALVATO: At this point, I'm just writing ~ATH code for arbitrary problems and bugs and hoping that it all works out.

MASHA: it hasnt

SALVATO: Gee, I wonder why.

. . .

SALVATO: Look at this beauty

SALVATO: Look. At. This. Beauty.

SALVATO: Girls chilling and writing poems, and the script is nothing more than a bunch of pointers and keywords, defining what each character pose means, what each background means, what the plot beats are, etc.

SALVATO: Hang on, let me snap a pic of the source code

MASHA: dan? whyd you go offline

SALVATO: Typing from my phone

SALVATO: It's... *Sayori putting her fingers together*

SALVATO: I tried to screenshot the ~ATH code, and then my computer exploded.

SALVATO: I must have accidentally written in some copy protection when I was doing yet another ~ATH session that I thought was going nowhere.

SALVATO: Oh well.

SALVATO: Team Salvato has worked for [0] days since a member's computer last exploded.

MASHA: team salvato

MASHA: really stickin with it? seems eh

SALVATO: It's the most professional name that I could think of.

MASHA: just your full name would be more professional

. . .

SALVATO: It's coming so close together, I'm getting tingles just hearing about the project.

SALVATO: September 22nd.

SALVATO: Mark your calendars.

SALVATO: Will probably do some vague marketing before then, though.

SALVATO: Here, have a release candidate.

. . .

MASHA: so when i played properly from the beginning it was yuri who stabbed herself in the first section

MASHA: and that kinda got me to think

MASHA: that youre just like yuri in the game

MASHA: you started out so shy and wanted to present the best of your best

MASHA: but now youre opening up about all the troubles youve been having as ddlc nears completion

MASHA: obvs yuri goes through this in less than a week

SALVATO: Anime realism.

SALVATO: The timeframe of the game is not changing.

. . .

SALVATO: And besides, if I had to choose a single mascot of the game, I'd choose Natsuki.

MASHA: the little monster girl

SALVATO: Besides the name and being tsundere, I can't think of any other similarities between the two.

. . .

MASHA: ok trying to sell this game with natsuki it is

. . .

SALVATO: Final trailer.

MASHA: i think you wrote dan salvato instead of team salvato

SALVATO: Fuck

SALVATO: Well, I'm absolutely NOT re-rendering the trailer, because for all I know, there's some ~ATH code in my copy of Premiere, and hitting render will make my computer explode.

. . .

SALVATO: Wakey, wakey.

SALVATO: Guess what day it is?

MASHA: september 22?

SALVATO: Exactly!

SALVATO: And... we have a launch!

SALVATO:  <http://ddlc.moe/>

MASHA: you crazy dan you actually did it

MASHA: a game of your own making

SALVATO: I know, right?

MASHA: so now what?

SALVATO: With any luck, continuing with both my own ideas and collaborations.

MASHA: like project libitina?

SALVATO: Portrait of Markov.

SALVATO: Project Libitina is the in-universe thing.

SALVATO: Oh, boy, I can't wait to indulge in all the details of THAT, literally as I come up with them.

MASHA: im by your side

SALVATO: Of course you are.

. . .

SALVATO: Fuck

SALVATO: Fuck.

MASHA: they made monika into a waifu simulator

SALVATO: Yes.

SALVATO: Do you already know or is it just a guess?

MASHA: just a guess

SALVATO: Good; that means you're not spending any time in 4chan, the true home of degeneracy.

. . .

SALVATO: And it only took them four days, whereas I've agonized myself over with the game for the better part of two years.

SALVATO: How is the Internet so much better at everything than I am?

SALVATO: I'm gonna need some space for contemplation.

. . .

SALVATO: I know neither of us is a lawyer, but how about a clause stating that you must complete the game (and that means delete Monika) before you're even allowed to play mods?

. . .

SALVATO: Hey.

SALVATO: It's been a while, hasn't it?

SALVATO: With download counts for DDLC increasing with each passing month...

SALVATO: Needless to say, as far as my own mental health is concerned, that has been... not fun.

SALVATO: And yet, I keep pushing myself to experience at least some positivity in my life.

SALVATO: The sort of positivity that I've experienced, time and time again, as DDLC took shape and became the complete visual novel - and apparently, Internet phenomenon too.

SALVATO: Once PewDiePie, Markiplier AND Jacksepticeye are all playing your game, then you truly know that you succeeded in something, even if the anxiety that comes with them seeing the fruits of your hard work is unbearable, and even if you constantly want to just declare that you have no further comments and disappear off the face of the Internet.

SALVATO: So, I guess I just wanted to say: thank you.

MASHA: aww

SALVATO: Thank you for letting me meander as DDLC slowly but surely developed into a full game.

SALVATO: Thank you for entertaining every single silly idea that I had.

SALVATO: Not to diminish the work of Dave and Kagefumi and Satchely and Velinquent, who really helped bring the visual element of the story to life...

SALVATO: But you can't really have a visual element of a story without the story itself, and you can't have a story if you have no confidence as a storyteller.

SALVATO: Thank you for helping me gain confidence in my own ideas.

SALVATO: Thank you for being a part of my Literature Club.

**Author's Note:**

> Full disclosure:
> 
>   * "Yeah, so there's the first-year girl..." to "Especially if she commits suicide" are directly lifted from the DDLC Concept Art Booklet.
>   * This takes place in the Doki Doki Infinite Choices AU (same as Bugs, Glitches and Exploits), and therefore, details are intended to match that fic, not reality.
>   * In-universe, not counting the segment I mentioned above, this has _not_ been published.
> 



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